Strange Tide

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I think your last little escapade put an end to that,’ said Giles. ‘Take a look at her, just don’t touch.’

  The body was covered to the shoulders. Bryant examined the girl’s pale features. Her skin was the greenish-grey of a turtle’s stomach. ‘I used to think there was a dark romance to drowning,’ he said, slipping beneath the waves amid billowing petticoats.’

  ‘Not if you’re chained to a post,’ said Giles. ‘Drowning is usually fast. This wasn’t.’

  ‘It sounds like someone took pleasure in making her suffer,’ said Bryant, walking around the cadaver tray. ‘Are there any externals?’

  ‘Let me get to that in a minute. Janice has already sent us an ID. Her prints were on record. Lynsey Dalladay, twenty-four. We’ve notified the next of kin. She was seven weeks pregnant.’

  ‘A rather Victorian reason for murder. Bit unlikely these days.’

  ‘I guess that depends on whom she told. I’m waiting to hear back from her physician.’

  ‘Was she dead before she was attached to the rock?’

  ‘There’s no mucus in her air passages, no distension of the lungs, no broken blood vessels. She didn’t struggle so I’d have to conclude that she was either rendered unconscious and carried out to the site, then awoke, or that she’d been tranquillized.’

  Bryant unwrapped a stick of barley sugar. ‘What about her natural state of composure?’

  ‘You mean she let it happen? That would be very unusual. I’m on the toxicology now.’

  ‘Wouldn’t the cold water have woken her?’ May asked.

  ‘She was face down when the tide came in, wasn’t she? There’s sand in her left ear.’ Giles tapped her on the side of the head with his antenna. ‘She wouldn’t have been able to breathe. If you’re in deep water and fighting for breath you can’t think about calling for help. You want to keep your body upright, so your arms go straight out – you make a clawing motion.’ He demonstrated. ‘That stage only lasts for up to a minute. Then you submerge and hold your breath for as long as possible, up to about ninety seconds. After that you suddenly inhale water, splutter, cough, maybe throw up, inhale more. The water blocks the gas exchange in delicate tissues and triggers your airway to seal shut – that’s laryngospasm. It burns deep in your chest. After the pain you feel suddenly calm because you’re losing consciousness from oxygen deprivation. Your heart stops and your brain dies. It’s not entirely unpleasant, by all accounts.’

  ‘Unless the victim is in shallow water,’ May countered.

  ‘Right, so in this case it played out a little differently. If you can’t move and you’re being forced to breathe water, your first reaction is still to hold your breath. You reach a breaking point and involuntarily inhale, but you do it too sharply, taking in a large amount of liquid, which ends up in the stomach. That’s what happened here. She didn’t vomit much prior to cerebral hypoxia, so I’m thinking she hyperventilated, decreased her CO2 levels, suffered hypoxia, passed out and then drew in the water. It was cold and we don’t know how long she was trapped there, so there may have been numbness that lessened the pain of laryngospasm, sending her directly into a comatose state. All I can tell you is that she wasn’t dead when she was chained to the post, probably just unconscious.’

  Gently cradling her head, he slowly rotated it and parted her hair. ‘I took a careful look at this. The contusion at the base of her skull is consistent with a blow from some kind of metal spike; it’s four-sided. It’s possible that whoever did it knocked her out, which would explain why she didn’t scream and attract anyone. Of course, that scenario creates other physical problems.’

  ‘Presumably it was dark and misty and there was no one to see what happened,’ said Bryant. ‘Tower Bridge is lit up like a funfair these days but it’s still a little too far away to throw much light on the beach, and the pier blocks it.’

  May agreed. ‘We searched the foreshore for weapons but didn’t come up with anything.’

  ‘Do you have any CCTV footage?’ Giles asked.

  ‘Dan’s working on that as well,’ said May. ‘We’ll see when we get to the PCU.’

  Giles was studying Bryant. ‘Are you back at the ranch?’ he asked casually. ‘I thought—’

  ‘You thought what?’ said Bryant, sucking the barley sugar.

  ‘I was told you were taking some time off.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, can you stop trying to be so tactful?’ Bryant clattered the stick around his false teeth. ‘My mind is dying, my body is not. Right now I’m all there, but sometimes I’m not here. When I’m all there you’ll know because I’ll be here, but when I’m not here you won’t know because I won’t be here. All clear?’

  ‘Yes. No. Not really,’ said Giles.

  ‘He means that he’ll either be in the office or at home, depending on whether he’s suffering another attack,’ said May.

  ‘And please don’t talk about me as if I’m not here,’ Bryant warned. ‘Giles, are you going to file a Category Two or Three?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but I imagine it’ll have to be a Two,’ said Giles.

  ‘But she was chained up. Surely that indicates murder or manslaughter.’

  ‘There’s no way of knowing that chaining her there indicates an intention to kill.’

  ‘I can’t see what else it would indicate.’

  ‘You’d be surprised what people do for kicks,’ Giles replied.

  ‘Realistically, what are we looking at – misadventure or an open verdict?’

  ‘Probably the former. I’ll only go with an open verdict as the last resort. I can’t file yet anyway, not without a more accurate time of death. Assuming she drowned at around—’

  ‘The tide started coming in at one fifteen a.m.,’ Bryant interrupted.

  ‘I didn’t tell you that,’ said May.

  Bryant pulled an old-fashioned printed Thames tide table from his back pocket. ‘I always have one on me.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ Giles folded away his antenna. ‘Then I’ll wait for your report, shall I?’

  ‘We’re sending the team out to track down witnesses,’ said May, ‘but don’t get your hopes up. I’ll call you from the office.’ He turned to his partner, who was about to head off without him. ‘And you – don’t you dare stray out of my line of vision.’

  ‘There are things I need to do so I’ll see you back there,’ said Bryant, disappearing around the corner.

  ‘No, Arthur, I promised I’d stay by your side. You can’t just go off—’

  But Bryant had already done so.

  8

  SECRETS & LIES

  Cassie North wore a crimson spangled swimsuit and matching high heels. The outfit wasn’t her idea, but audiences had an expectation of tradition. It was now a few months after Ali had first met her in the club, and she was ready to be chopped into pieces.

  Ali held the cabinet door open for her. The box was black and silver, as tall as a person. She settled herself inside and he closed the three sections, locking each one with theatrical prestiges. Cassie’s face, hands and left foot were visible through openings in the front of the cabinet. Ali stepped back and watched her. Cassie smiled up into the spotlight.

  He looked out at the expectant audience, knowing that he could afford to wait for another few seconds before starting. He had them in the palm of his hand. Piano, drums and trumpet, he thought, looking down into the orchestra pit. Not exactly the big time. The musician handling the drum roll hadn’t been sober for a single performance.

  The auditorium held four hundred but was less than a quarter full. Saturday matinees always seemed to coincide with mall sales, and the few who were here were not enjoying themselves. At least there was no shuffling or talking – audiences of this generation had been raised to behave politely in theatres – but they were a very old, very English crowd. After all, who else would be attracted to a show called The Good Old Times Variety Show?

  He was in the Roebuck Theatre, Sevenoaks, typical of a thousand small venu
es scattered across the country. A painted ceiling, gold cherubs, red velvet curtains, unused side boxes smelling of damp, a provincial lighting rig with a single follow-spot and a box flood, coughing pensioners and an uninterested girl hawking programmes at the rear of the stalls.

  Ali picked up the first of the rectangular metal blades and inserted it horizontally in the cabinet’s midsection. He added a second, dividing the box into thirds. He pretended to push at the blades, as if they were encountering resistance. Cassie gave a squeal. There were murmurs of interest in the audience.

  With a flourish Ali slid the cabinet’s midsection apart from the top and bottom, pulling Cassie’s torso away from the rest of her. Then he summoned a member of the audience.

  He usually picked a pretty young girl. Pensioners took too long to reach the stage and children were liable to start poking around the back, trying to spoil the illusion. Today nobody wanted to come up, so the programme-seller stepped in.

  Ali opened a small door on the cabinet’s midsection so that the usher could make a point of examining and prodding Cassie’s stomach. The drummer missed his cue again because he’d been at the bar in the intermission.

  The trick was old and easy to perform. The black stripes down the sides of the casket made it look narrower, and the blades weren’t as wide as their handles. The left foot was false, and could be moved from inside. Some assistants could perform the so-called ‘Zig-Zag’ by actually sticking their feet out, but Cassie didn’t have enough flexibility.

  The illusion only received a patter of applause. They were used to seeing better on TV. He released Cassie and they took their bows. They had only just started the act together, but he already knew they needed to move on to something bigger. If they stayed on this circuit they would never make real money. By the time they’d paid off the booking agent they hardly had anything left over, and the receipts would never make them rich. They’d only managed to get this far by sabotaging the resident magician’s van.

  After years of sitting on the sun-warmed stone of the dock, staring at the sea’s horizon and waiting for each day to pass, Ali was facing a world of opportunity. It was already becoming hard to remember who he had been. Everything was new, everything was exciting, everything was there for the taking.

  A plan was fizzing inside his brain, but he needed to run it past Cassie. She would know whether it was something they could handle; she had a good head for business. As the curtains swished shut behind them and they headed offstage to make way for Olga and her Performing Poodles, he decided to tell her about his idea that night. The decision would eventually, in the fullness of time, bring him into contact with the detectives of the PCU.

  Back in the present, DS Janice Longbright turned sideways in the mirror and pinched the roll of flesh at her waist. She usually blamed her weight gain not on portion control but corset failure. Her hair was currently Harlow Blonde, but the roots needed touching up. On the right side of her desk sat some pumpkin seed crackers and a tub of quinoa with edamame beans, prepared for her by Meera’s sister. On the left, challenging these, was a sausage sandwich oozing brown sauce, lovingly placed there by Colin Bimsley. Life was full of such choices. She loved the fact that everyone called the condiment ‘brown sauce’ without knowing what was in it. On the other hand, South American farmers were suffering because of the sudden increased demand for quinoa. So really it was a matter of putting the planet’s needs before her own.

  No contest: she took a bite from the sausage sandwich and slumped back at her desk. Longbright had put up with a lot of aggravation during her time in law enforcement, from the bad old days of institutional sexism to cruel personal comments about her racy past in the press. It didn’t seem to matter that she was on the front line when it came to protecting the city; someone was always ready to dredge up old stories about her student days, when she had paid for her education by performing in Soho’s now-vanished burlesque shows. Her years at the Peculiar Crimes Unit had dealt their fair share of blows, too, starting with the death of her mother and ending, most recently, with the departure of a lover. She had made more sacrifices than she had ever intended, and now, somewhere between lying about her age and proudly telling everyone what it was, found herself alone and facing an uncertain future.

  At least she had always been able to take refuge in the company of her fellow officers. She thought of John May as her surrogate father, and the idea that she would have to watch him losing his greatest friend and ally was almost too much to bear. Now they would have to fight for stability in the face of irrevocable change.

  Arthur Bryant was sitting in the armchair opposite her, his prehistoric overcoat rucked up about his shrinking form like a mammoth-skin, his white tonsure standing vertically above his ears like frightened fur.

  He had shuffled in and asked to talk to her, a permission he had never bothered to seek before. She knew at once that he was going to officially take her into his confidence, not realizing that John May had already spoken to her about the doctor’s prognosis.

  ‘The worst part,’ said Bryant, typically beginning in the middle of a thought, ‘is feeling so powerless. Illness is an insidious trickster, a time-thief that plays spiteful emotional games. I really feel I must apologize.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said briskly, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to stand it if he became maudlin.

  ‘It’s a progression that’s hard to calibrate,’ he continued, accepting the tea mug she handed him. ‘Fascinating, really. In its later stages it will become unforgivably dreary, rather like a dull partner brought to a party by a gregarious guest, a parasite attached to its host. I’ll be boring to be around, and I’ll be bored by doctors and nurses and waiting about, and all those ghastly prosaic things I’ve never had to bother with before, and the conversation will be about illness and nothing else. You know I have no patience. If there’s anything more spectacularly mind-numbing than having to undergo tests, it’s people wanting to talk to you about them.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you to the hospital?’ she offered.

  Bryant’s blue eyes widened. ‘Good Lord, no, why would you want to do that? I’ll take a paperback. Reading a book is the finest way of attaining inner peace. It seems as though our adult lives are entirely spent fighting to regain ground, first against stasis and then against actual decay, but it’s a battle we can never fully win. What was the point of me learning so much if all that knowledge is simply going to be chucked into the soil? Shall I at least set my lands in order? – T. S. Eliot.’ He suddenly clapped his hands. ‘But that isn’t why I wanted to talk to you. I’m going to need your help.’

  She had half expected something like this. ‘Oh yes?’ she said warily.

  ‘I struck a deal with poor old Raymondo. I promised I would stay home whenever I felt seedy, and that John would secretly cart me to and from the office. It’s only a ten-minute walk but there is a slight risk that I’ll wander off into traffic or start pretending I’m Catherine of Aragon or something. But I want to be involved.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘The case, of course – the girl in the river. John says she was pregnant and thinks it’s simply a matter of cherchez l’homme, but he’s wrong. It rather goes without saying that there are several alternative courses of action you can take if you get a girl pregnant, not one of which is chaining her to a concrete post in the Thames. There’s much more to this than meets the eye, and I have a few ideas about where to start looking. However, it will involve a certain amount of subterfuge.’

  Longbright was puzzled. ‘Why? If John is going to bring you to the PCU whenever you feel up to working, what kind of subterfuge are you thinking of?’

  ‘That’s the thing. I can’t just sit behind a desk. I’ll need to take trips out and get my hands dirty in the great seething metropolis. But I don’t want to get John into trouble. He won’t if someone else covers for me.’

  ‘By “covers” you mean “lies” and by “someone” you mean me.’
>
  Bryant pursed his lips, thinking. ‘That’s about the size of it, yes.’

  ‘You already know what I’ll say.’ Longbright talked to the ceiling. ‘Why do I do this? Why me?’

  ‘Because—’

  ‘It was a rhetorical question. I’ll do it on one condition: that you wear the transmitter Dan made for you. If you won’t turn on your phone’s GPS tracker you can at least do that.’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ said Bryant, rising and flashing a grin made wider by his oversized false teeth.

  He knows all of our flaws and works them, she thought irritably as he left. Not bad for someone who’s losing his mind.

  9

  FLOW & CURRENT

  As the two Daves had now cordoned off the basement and one of the staircases while awaiting instructions about what to do with their coffin-sized discovery, the staff met in the temporary ground-floor common room. It was a little after 3.00 p.m. on Monday when Dan Banbury turned his laptop to the others and began running footage.

  ‘I’ve sent these files to all of you,’ he said, ‘just in case you spot anything I’ve missed. Lynsey Dalladay was found chained up here, between the pier and the shore wall, just after dawn this morning.’ He tapped the centre of the visual, which showed an area of sand at the base of the river steps. ‘She’d just turned twenty-four. She’d been rendered unconscious with a blow to the back of the head, but the contusion is abraded and therefore ambiguous. Giles found particles of grit in the wound that match the concrete she was chained to. She drowned in a few centimetres of water as the tide came in. There was nothing in the pockets of her jeans, no tube card, no wallet, no mobile phone. She has an old Nokia but it hasn’t contacted any of her network provider’s transmitters since yesterday afternoon, when she rang her mother but hung up before it answered.’

  ‘What have you got on the pregnancy?’ asked May.

  ‘I was getting to that. She attended a walk-in clinic at the Cavendish Health Centre just off Oxford Street on the previous Wednesday and was informed that she was seven weeks pregnant. Before then she was registered at the Royal Free. We’re still trying to find her medical files. They’ve got computer problems.’